Let us take another illustration. The machines of the country are still
driven by belting. The motor drive, while it is coming, is still in the
future. There is not one establishment in one hundred that does not
leave the care and tightening of the belts to the judgment of the
individual who runs the machine, although it is well known to all who
have given any study to the subject that the most skilled machinist
cannot properly tighten a belt without the use of belt clamps fitted
with spring balances to properly register the tension. And the writer
showed in a paper entitled "Notes on Belting" presented to The American
Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1893, giving the results of an
experiment tried on all of the belts in a machine shop and extending
through nine years, in which every detail of the care and tightening and
tension of each belt was recorded, that belts properly cared for
according to a standard method by a trained laborer would average twice
the pulling power and only a fraction of the interruptions to
manufacture of those tightened according to the usual methods. The loss
now going on throughout the country from failure to adopt and maintain
standards for all small details is simply enormous.
It is, however, a good sign for the future that a firm such as Messrs.
Dodge & Day of Philadelphia, who are making a specialty of standardizing
machine shop details, find their time fully occupied.
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